


Until you set your old heart free

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Affirmation and Kindness 2k16, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-08
Packaged: 2018-08-07 08:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7708693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the tomb, Pike makes a discovery, and Percy remembers that not all healing is magic and mended bones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until you set your old heart free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justalotoffeelings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalotoffeelings/gifts).



> happy (belated? is it belated if I already sent this to you for your birthday?) birthday!
> 
> spoilers for episode 44
> 
> Title from “Hello My Old Heart” by the Oh Hellos, from Pike’s Spotify playlist

She gets the news from Grog. It’s not all that hard to coax the story out of him, not really. He tells it with relish, the kind that hides a deeper fear, as if spilling the words will wipe them away. A tale told like a confession––Pike has spent time enough in a temple to recognize the tone. She listens with a smile, soft comfort, and afterwards Grog seems to stand taller, free of some great weight.

“Thank you for telling me,” says Pike.

“Would have been better if you were there,” he tells her, and Pike lays her hand on his elbow and pretends it doesn’t tear her up inside that she wasn’t.

Then she goes in search of Percy.

She finds him in the Whitestone library.

He’s tucked in a back corner, curled in an old wingback chair, one foot tucked beneath him, devoid of his coat, his belts, his guns; even his glasses sit neatly folded on the table next to him. He looks impossibly young, vulnerable without the layers he puts on, the masks he wears for the world. He sits with an old book in his lap, hair falling into his eyes as he leans over it, fingers running along the lines. Now and again tremors shake his hands, rustling the page. Pike’s heart aches to see it.

He opens his mouth, and she thinks he’s going to call her out for lurking, but it is not words that come forth. It is music. Language spoken as song, sentences drifting through the air with their own rhythm and melody, and Pike does not understand the words but she knows the cadence from years spent studying at the altar of Sarenrae.

Celestial.

“Oh,” she murmurs, unable to help herself. “That’s lovely.”

Percy stutters to a stop, words echoing in the silence like the chime of a bell.

“Oh, Pike,” he says, fumbling for his glasses. “I didn’t hear you enter.”

“I’m much quieter without the armor,” Pike jokes. Percy cracks a smile, brittle and false, and Pike feels her own slip away. She can see his hurt from here, shining clear as daylight. “Do you mind if I join you?” she asks. The library swallows her voice, towering bookshelves and thick carpets and dusty corners stealing the words away as soon as she speaks.

“Not at all. Do come in.”

Pike’s feet make almost no noise as she crosses the room––a nice change from the usual––and she clambers up into the chair next to Percy, only a little undignified. Her legs she tucks beneath her; they’re far too short to reach the ground.

“What are you reading?” she asks, and Percy glances at the book in his lap with a distracted air.

“It’s, ah, one of the books Father gave me when I expressed an interest in learning Celestial. A history of Pelor, I believe.”

“I didn’t know you spoke it.”

“I was something of an indoor child,” he says with good-natured self-depreciation. “I had to find some way to pass the time, and the challenge intrigued me.”

Pike smiles at that. “I’m not surprised.”

He tries to smile back, but it’s a tentative and cautious thing, and when she says nothing more his eyes drop back down to the tome in his lap and his fingers return to tracing the characters inked there. Pike watches him, listens to the hum of the words as he murmurs them. Warm winter sunlight cascades through the open window, and Pike could almost forget the darkness that clings to this town like spilled ink, seeping into the scars and staining what it touches.

“Percy,” she says after a moment. She waits until he looks at her, until she has his attention, an eyebrow raised in her direction. He looks so peaceful here, curled in the sunlight, languid and free in a way she so rarely sees him. She hates to shatter it.

Sometimes, though, you have to break a bone before it can mend.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

His face shutters in an instant, mouth a flat line, eyes distant and cool. The sunlight turns crystalline, fragile and sharp.

“I should have been,” she continues. Her eyes do not leave his; it is important he hear this. “But I wasn’t. So, I’m sorry.”

“I am the last person you need apologize to,” he says after a moment, words slow and uneven. She sees the care he takes in picking them and gives him his time to weigh each before he lets it fall from his tongue; every one is all the more precious for the consideration taken in choosing it. “I should be the one apologizing.”

“We all make mistakes,” Pike tells him, and means it.

His brittle laugh lacks even an ounce of humor. “We don’t all get our friends killed.”

“Percy,” says Pike, and she leans forward to bridge the gap between them, one small hand resting on his elbow. He tenses, trapped-animal still, and Pike pauses. She has no wish to frighten him, only to reach him. “You don’t have to carry it on your own.”

He stares at her for a long minute, and Pike gives him time. Healing, more than anything, requires patience. It is coaxing broken things to grow again, trusting time and dedication to perform miracles. 

If there is one thing Pike has in spades, it is patience.

“What else am I supposed to do?” he asks her finally, voice small and tired, and it is not so hard to see the boy within, curled in his father’s old chair, familiar tome in his lap; a lost soul seeking old comforts.

“You aren’t alone,” she says softly. “And, it all turned out alright.”

“This time,” he says darkly, and Pike nods.

“This time,” she echoes. “And next time, we’ll know better. And I’ll be there, like I should be. And Vex will look before she leaps.”

“No she won’t,” he says, and now Pike sees a hint of his usual humor. “Not if there’s gold involved.”

“Okay maybe not,” Pike allows with a little laugh. “I’m just saying, sometimes we’re lucky, and we get seconds chances, and hating yourself for it won’t do any good, alright?”

He stares at her, blinking, and his glasses give him an owlish look. “How did we ever manage without you?” he asks, voice tinged with awe, and Pike pulls away, face warm.

“Oh, you guys did perfectly fine,” she says, sitting back in the chair. Percy’s eyes stay fixed to her, brighter and clearer than they were a moment ago.

The sunlight falling across her lap feels warm again.

“Will you read to me?” she asks softly into his silence. “It’s a beautiful language, and you speak it so well.”

“I–– of course.” He slips off his glasses, eyes falling back to the tome in his lap, and he picks up from where he left off, flowing phrases drifting through the air, bright and clear as sunlight. 

Pike closes her eyes and lets the music wrap itself around her, a song of growth after winter, of light in the darkness, of healing hurts, and she might not understand the words but she feels the intent, not unlike that of her own patron. They are not so different, Pelor and Sarenrae. Here, sitting in this warm and quiet corner of the library with the last of the day’s light glinting off fresh-fallen snow, the inky darkness that drips through the cracks of this town, of this boy, neither stick nor stain, but rather burn away until only the echo of a warm voice singing Celestial remains.


End file.
